Jim Davidson is a speaker, teacher, consultant, forensic accountant, author, actor, and entrepreneur.
Currently the chief financial officer of three start-ups and vision director of Houston Space Society, Jim has been the founder and chancellor of Individual Sovereign University since 2009. He has worked since 1983 in banking, aerospace, real estate, entertainment, software development, finance, health practice management, management consulting, free port development, toll road development, fishing fleet development, digital gold currency exchange operations, private venture capital stock exchange operations, gold and silver coin sales, museum acquisitions, private equity, crypto-currency technology development, and university development. He is a published author of four books and hundreds of essays and articles. He has been involved in digital currencies since 1998.
Starting at age 8 in the recycling business, Jim has owned and operated 17 businesses in various industries. He advanced rapidly in his term-time banking career while in college, and began writing business plans in 1986. He has been involved in business planning and financing for over 200 small businesses, which collectively raised in excess of $600 million with his involvement. His aerospace career included launch vehicle systems development, launch vehicle logistics management, voice of launch control, publicity, marketing, satellite launch sales, and a pioneering role in space tourism in 1991. His work in real estate included the development of $250 million in single family homes in Friendswood, Texas including road design, lot preparation, and housing contractor management. In software development he built database software, practice management software for chiropractors and medical doctors, and provided documentation expertise for enterprise encrypted storage software. Jim’s management consulting practice began in 1995 with clients in the United States, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
Beginning in 1978, Jim worked as a teacher including private tutoring, public community college and private school settings. He has taught mathematics, European and American history, office application software, database development, economics, Somali studies, space settlement systems development, business planning, encryption software operation, and a survey on cyber-security.
Jim was educated at the University of Kansas, Columbia University in the City of New York, Rice University’s Jesse H. Jones graduate school of business administration, and Individual Sovereign University. He has an MBA in marketing and entrepreneurship (Rice 1987) and a bachelors degree in history (Columbia 1985). He won several trophies in debate, studied the violin, drama, and martial arts. He’s acted on stage and screen and has travelled extensively in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America.
His honours include the National Distillers Association’s National Merit Scholarship (1981); the degree of distinction in the Natoinal Forensic League (1980); John Jay scholarships (1981-82); Kansas scholar; and membership in the Dayton Friends Meeting.+